Just Shoot Me

The old Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" has struck again. Yesterday at school the air conditioning died. We were working on the music projects in two classes so I was doing a lot of moving around as well as playing guitar. I am not a great guitar player so it takes a lot out of me to run through songs with the kids numerous times. When the air went out the room temperature quickly rose to 88 degrees F (and unlike Arizona it sure as heck was not a "dry heat"!) We didn't have much choice except to suck it up and keep working. I chugged water a lot and wiped my face every few minutes so I wouldn't drown the guitar in sweat. Thankfully I got through it with just a little nausea and a headache.

At home last night the nausea remained and the headache gradually got worse. I took some over the counter pills for the headache and went to bed early. The headache woke me up at 4 AM so I staggered into the kitchen, grabbed more pills, slapped a couple of ice packs on my neck, and waited for the pills to kick in so I could go to work. No temperature but I felt horrible. While showering the nausea kicked back in and I threw up. Lovely picture, huh? By this time I couldn't ignore the fact that I had suffered a heat stroke and my chances of going to teach were nil. I made it into the living room, asked the wife to dry my hair for me since by this time I couldn't hold the dryer. I threw together some hasty lesson plans and phoned in for a substitute. I've been lying down most of the day and just got back up. I still feel pretty crappy but have been drinking a lot of water to rehydrate. Pity party for one, please!

It is probably a good thing I stayed out. I just checked my school email system and found out that the air conditioner is still giving problems. They are supposedly working to fix it so I am praying that when I go back, hopefully tomorrow, the room will be tolerable. I won't survive much more of this and the kids are really suffering.

No A/C Again

Friday was not a good day here in sunny Florida. The room air conditioning was out again in what has become an old story here. Things weren't too bad while sitting down but when we started moving around during a lab the kids and I suffered. By the end of the day I could hardly stand up and the sweat was dripping off of my face onto the table. Several students were dizzy and had to leave class to cool off. I emailed the head of maintenance who informed me that Siemans was working on it. At the end of the day I went to the (nice and cold) main office for a few minutes to recover before driving home.

All weekend I've been very nauseous and dizzy and have had to stay in bed. I can't take much more of this while trying to teach and the students are barely able to perform as well. With the county funding cutbacks the A/C thermostat has been raised to 74 degrees so when my air conditioning goes out, as it seems to often do, the temperature quickly goes up to 80-85 degrees inside. At the last faculty meeting we were told not to open our doors or windows so I can't even find relief by bringing in cooler air from outside. I've emailed anyone who could do anything about it but with no change in the regular breaking down of my room's system.

No A/C

All my grades are now in. I stayed in my room for a few hours today but there is something wrong with the air conditioning on our hallway and it got up to a humid 83 degrees F. That's not bad until I tried to move around and pack up a few items. Whew! I went back home at 1 PM and completed some paperwork in cool comfort. It's one thing to want to finish the year but with a heart condition I'm not going to kill myself in the process. I'm about wrapped up anyway. One more hour of work and turning in papers and everything will be wrapped up until next year. This summer is pretty much free except for a workshop on website design and one on producing an Anatomy exit exam and pacing guide. These are both in June. Whee! I can almost see the end of the trail where I will get a few days of rest.